Tubes are generally made from flat laminates which are rolled up to form a tube. Alternately the tubes are also made by a coextrusion process with no joints on the walls of the tube; such tubes are called seamless tubes. The available tubes have typically two main components: a tube body and a head/cap. The tube body and the head/cap are generally manufactured separately and then assembled to get a complete tube. The materials of construction of the two parts are typically different as they serve different purpose.
One of the biggest problems in today's world is global warming. The more the number of stages for a particular process the more the carbon footprint and consequently it adds up to global warming. The problem associated with the current tubes is their recyclability. As the tube body and the head/cap are made of dissimilar materials, such tubes cannot be recycled completely unless the parts made with dissimilar materials are separated from each other before recycling. The tube body and the head/cap need to be recycled separately. This is a labour-intensive process, takes a long time and is difficult to practice on a large scale making recycling non-sustainable, inconvenient and also uneconomical.
A tube or container integral with a closable head is known in from US 2006/0016837 which describes a container having a removable tab which creates a dispensing opening when removed and where a lateral projection on said tab can be used to reseal the tube. This type of tube head assembly has been developed to minimize the risk of using a scissors or a knife for cutting the container cap to dispense the content. The container is said to be made by blow moulding or injection moulding.
GB 2 120 630 describes a container for unit dosing of liquid medication for ophthalmic surgery and for respiratory care. Such a container or vial is said to be made by injection molding of a suitable plastic material like polypropylene. However this document does not address the problem of providing a tube with a reclosable cap.
Other than the above prior art, multi-tube containers with twist-off breaking head are also known. U.S. Pat. No. 5,577,636 describes a multi-tube container having multiple tubes in parallel. The container includes a plurality of body portions, each of which have a hollow portion for containing contents, a plurality of twistable head portions formed at one end of each of the body portions, a plurality of neck portions, each of which can be broken off by twisting of the head portion, creating an opening for extruding the contents from the hollow portion and is located between the body portion and the head portion, and a plurality of sealing portions formed at the other end of each of said body portions. Each of the sealing portions are breakably connected to the adjacent sealing portions, and at least one of the head portions and the neck portions are breakably connected to each other. This document does not disclose a tube made of a single material.
However all the prior art is silent about a composition for making a tube unitarily with the head/cap such that the tube is squeezable and at the same time provides good stress crack resistance.
The prior art does not teach anything about the recyclability of the material and also does not disclose any specific material or composition that can contribute both stress-crack resistance and squeezability required for making the tube integral with the head or cap by using the same material so that the recyclability becomes easier and the process becomes sustainable and reduce the carbon footprint.